


The Next Adventure

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, Freedom, Friends taking care of each other, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Implied/Referenced Past Abuse, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, Slavery, Swordplay, pov: costis, pov: kamet, thick as thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:58:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: Two scenes: the first from the night Kamet begins his narrative of their flight from the empire, the second from the night he finishes it. Two scenes showing the lives of Costis and Kamet as they recover from their first adventure, and prepare for what might lie ahead."If my acquaintance with you has taught me anything, it is to expect everything and be surprised by nothing."





	The Next Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [florianschild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/florianschild/gifts).



> Florianschild, I couldn't decide between your Costis and Kamet prompts so I attempted to combine them. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Many thanks to stardust_made for beta-reading.

Kamet woke in the night.

Holding perfectly still, he kept his breathing regulated, a deep and steady in and out, until wakefulness began to creep around the corners of his mind and he realised that he was alone in the room. Sucking in a deep breath, he let it out as a sigh and turned over in his bed, rustling the blankets.

The king did like his little jokes.

Maybe tomorrow he would ask to change rooms. If he truly was, as the king asserted, an honoured guest, to ask for a change of rooms would not be unreasonable. But the thought of asking for anything sent him down a warren of darker thoughts, and he found himself going to sleep each night in his former master's bed, and wondering what Eugenides had meant by it.

Staring up into the darkness towards the shadowed ceiling, Kamet folded his hands beneath his head and tried to recapture his dream. Dreams had visited his sleep only rarely over the years but they seemed to be making up for lost time now, as though the god of dreams had located him at last only when he lay his head down to sleep as a free man.

'Freedom tastes sweeter than you thought,' Melheret had said, and Kamet agreed, although by any measure what he had tasted of freedom since that moment, as an honoured guest enjoying the favour of the king and his kitchens, ought to have overshadowed what had gone before; he'd been a runaway, not a free man, when he fled Ianna-Ir, with only Costis believing and behaving as though he were.

Kamet got up to pace, feeling all the unaccustomed luxury in the action. To move when he was restless, to keep still when he was tired; such little things were easier to take out, examine, and put back in their proper space within his mind. He stopped in his shadowy ramble beside the ornate writing desk that had been Nahuseresh's domain the last time he was in Attolia. Kamet had seen to his business from a much smaller desk, actually a simple dressing table, in a corner of the small room where he'd slept.

At least he'd had his own space, when he was here with Nahuseresh, to sleep and to work. That it was in an anteroom to his master's bedchamber had meant that it was not at all private, but Kamet had told himself that he preferred it that way. Circumstances, especially when staying in a foreign land, could change so rapidly that Kamet had believed it to be for the best to keep himself constantly available to Nahuseresh. This also, of course, meant keeping himself abreast of news and gossip and his master's changing moods. Even when they were in Ianna-Ir…

Kamet's thoughts ran to ground. He'd been turning a tiny, jewelled inkpot over in his hands, exploring it by touch more than by sight in the darkness. Now he stared down at it, unable to determine even what colour it was, while he worked out what had tripped him up.

 _Even when we were in Ianna-Ir._ It wasn't that he'd caught himself saying instead, _Even when were at home,_ it was that he hadn't had the impulse to say any such thing. By any measure, Ianna-Ir had been his home for most of his life. It might feel to Kamet like a lifetime since he'd fled, but it had not, in fact, been so very long; as he paused to tally the days, Kamet had the sudden thought that if his life had gone on as it should have, Nahuseresh might still be holding him in contempt over the incident with the remchik. And in that brief span of time, Ianna-Ir had ceased to hold any association with the word, _home_.

His dream came back to him in a rush. No action, only images and impressions; a tiny boat that seemed to float in a tranquil pool while several yards away on all sides angry waves raged higher than the mast; a feeling of peace even in the face of the violent water, and then a feeling of panic despite the seeming calm.

He realised that the feeling lapping at his ankles might have been called homesickness, and as soon as he gave it a name it grabbed at him like a mighty current, threatening to pull him under as he scrabbled for a handhold against the unfamiliar feeling.

He missed Nahuseresh. He missed the order that came of belonging to him. Of belonging, full stop. With hands splayed on the desk he wished almost to hear the whistle of a lash descending upon him. Everything was familiar in this room, everything except for his own self.

He missed Costis. Costis and his blundering naivete, Costis and his unquestioning assurance that Kamet would rather be hungry, penniless, and sleeping in a lion's den than safe and comfortable with another man's chain around his neck.

"Maybe it was Costis after all," Kamet said aloud, breaking the spell of silence that had been pressing in on his ears. The panic seemed to burst like a bubble, and he followed his unthinking exclamation, finding logic in it. In Attolia, they did not have such strict laws concerning who was allowed to free a slave. "Maybe it was Costis, then, and not his confounding king."

Kamet straightened as the tightness in his chest eased. There was paper on the desk, and fresh ink and new pens, all laid out from earlier as a first, manageable step towards an impossible task.

Slowly, he lowered himself into the chair. A sense of lightness was spreading through his limbs. True, Nahuseresh had sat here once, but it did not belong to him any more than Kamet did. The desk, the rooms, all of it belonged to the king of Attolia, by whose kindness Kamet was now given the use of them. He reached for the place where a tinderbox should have rested and found it in the dark. He did not fumble with the unfamiliar box, and his hands had stopped shaking by the time he'd lit both lamps in their mirrored stands on either side of the desk.

Kamet reached for the memory of his dream and the feeling from earlier, and then for his pen. He reached for the memory of cool passages at midday and whitewashed stones, and of a purposeful and orderly life that was always, always, lived at the whim and caprice of another.

Kamet dipped his pen, and began to tell the story of his journey.

 

~*~

 

"Good!" Costis said, smiling. "Very good. Again, and this time watch that you don't drop your point before the parry."

Kamet was obviously tired, but he gamely raised his wooden sword once again, checked his stance and his grip before Costis had even opened his mouth to remind him, and then shook his hair out of his face before looking up to meet Costis's eyes.

They'd been practicing like this for two weeks.

 

Two weeks ago, Costis had cleared the table after supper, covered it with a cloth, then laid down both of his swords and his dagger on its surface. He dragged the large lamp closer on its stand and lit it for the first time in weeks. They rarely used it, both to save the expense of burning through so much oil so quickly, and because so much light seemed excessive in a small house like theirs. But for this work, which he hardly wanted to do outdoors in the noonday sun in full sight of their neighbours, it was a necessary excess. He picked up an oiled cloth and got to work.

A minute later, Kamet joined him.

"If we're to be seeing to our weapons…" was his only comment as he made a space for himself opposite Costis and unrolled his leather kit.

Costis snorted when Kamet pulled out his penknife, and Kamet looked up with a quick grin before settling in to the business of trimming his pens and seeing to his collection of metal nibs.

"What will you do," Costis asked after a minute, "now that you've finished writing the epic tale of the Adventures of Kamet and Costis?"

Kamet nudged the toe of Costis's boot with his own, not looking up, and Costis grinned to see the amused smile that he was directing down at his pen.

"In truth?" Kamet said, setting one pen down and reaching for another, lifting his eyes to Costis. "I did not expect to finish it before the next adventure found us." Costis raised his eyebrows, and Kamet lifted one shoulder. "If my acquaintance with you has taught me anything, it is to expect everything and be surprised by nothing."

Costis heard it for both the tease and the compliment Kamet intended and felt his cheeks flush as he jostled Kamet's foot in turn, each of them smiling as they went back to their work.

It was Costis who broke the silence again. He'd looked up and for the third time in ten minutes saw Kamet eyeing the sword in his hands. "I could teach you how to use it," he said, running his whetstone along the blade. Kamet met his eyes, startled. "If you wanted to learn, that is." Costis dropped his eyes with a shrug, sending his stone singing over the blade and dragging his mind away from the two wooden practice swords in his duffel, tucked into a pocket that he had not opened since setting out on this journey to Roa some months ago.

"You want me to learn," Kamet said. "You want to teach me. Why?"

Costis let his hands fall still when he realised that the only noise in the room was coming from him.

"I want to teach you," Costis finally told him, "because as easy as it is to forget the outside world while we're up here, war _is_ coming. The Mede is coming."

And it was easy. Their little village was peaceful, bordering on idyllic. Up here in the heights it seemed easy to believe that nothing could touch them, that war and destruction were the province of other people and no concern of theirs.

Their trek from Attolia to Roa had seemed like a sunlit parallel of the journey from Ianna-Ir to Attolia. It had made Costis realise that for all he'd felt righteously betrayed by Kamet after learning what Kamet had been withholding from him; he, also, had not been entirely forthcoming. He had in the ways that mattered, of course – he had not lied to him, nor concealed anything on purpose. But he had censored himself without always being aware of it. And so, on their second journey together, the long hours had been spent in conversation much as before, but much more had come out than before, and Costis had been surprised at what he confided in Kamet.

The stories about his king, in particular, acquired greater detail. He had even told Kamet what Eugenides had said about Nahuseresh, that night before Costis accidentally changed everything.

 

"Good," Costis said curtly, falling back into his stance. "Again?"

He felt awful, but he did not drop his eyes nor retract the challenge. Two days ago he'd said, _Again? But you must tell me when you want to be finished, Kamet,_ and Kamet had replied, _Stop saying that, my enemy will not be so considerate._

Kamet's chest was heaving and there was a flush on his cheeks that would have been alarming on paler Attolian skin, but he lifted his sword.

"I had a dream," Kamet said after they broke apart, and he sounded as though he was speaking with the last of his breath. "That I was the two-handed man sent to kill my master."

Costis didn't advance.

At the sudden break from rigid procedure, Kamet also dropped the point of his sword and braced it in the dirt, leaning on it like a crutch.

"Go on," Costis said.

"You said that your king complained to you that you couldn't kill a man with one hand. That you cannot strangle a man when you have only one hand. In my dream…In my dream it came to pass that, just as he had sent you to steal my master's right hand, so I became the king's right hand sent to steal my master's life, with both my hand and his around his neck."

"It was only a dream," Costis began to say, but quickly shut his mouth at the look on Kamet's face. For a minute, there was no sound but the rustle of the wind through the rocks and the scrubby bushes around them, distant birdsong, and far, far below, the crash of waves against the base of the cliff.

Kamet lifted his practice sword and brushed the dirt from its tip, his voice coming stronger as he recovered his breath. "When I woke, I tried to think what it might mean. But all I could do was wish success for my dream-self, wish him joy in his task. And so." He dropped back into his stance, raised his sword, and met Costis's eyes. "Again?"

"So," Costis agreed, and came forward to meet him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy my writing, I'd be thrilled if you'd take a minute to check out my original fiction. My first novel, 'Portrait of a Stranger,' is a sweet story of three chance encounters, two boys, and first love. Co-written with my fic-writing partner stardust_made, it will be released on December 26, 2018. You can order it [HERE](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KVLWHF6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1543166018&sr=1-1&keywords=Portrait+of+a+Stranger).
> 
> The first few chapters are available to read [here on our blog](https://leboncanon.wordpress.com/). We appreciate the support of our fellow fanpeople!


End file.
